119
by skyspireskit3
Summary: A collection of drabbles, 119 words each. BrucexJoker. Rating may go up.
1. Decode

Disclaimer: Not mine.

* * *

In the hours before sunlight

braves their room

Bruce sits awake, trying to read the battlefield Braille

of his sleeping lover's body.

The shoulders rounded from derelict dislocation. The waist narrowed by crudely healed ribs.

Blind bullet holes glare, knife trails shine wax-smooth.

The Joker's feet look like somebody flayed off the skin, then tried to paste it back on

piece by piece.

Bruce roams with detective's eye and hands, filing clinical details

trying to unearth the tools, motives, the precision or savagery

clues to the shrouded whole.

But cold observation dissolves against the snarling

wilderness of scars

racing away over the white flesh into the dark, Bruce tries to follow

but all he ever meets are dead ends.

* * *

More to come.


	2. Mirror

Milky cataract glass reflects

face weeping red, paint tears already

faded to shadows.

He doesn't recognize the eyes, but then

he never really knew them

anyway.

Screaming (his?) stopped, leaving the world

roaring deaf. Tortured nerve endings finally

burnt out, silent.

Already it's hard to remember what happened.

No way yet to tell if this

is the hush that precedes, or the lull that drifts after

the birth of a new universe in explosion.

He can't see it, not quite yet.

His fist bullets into the glass, reflection splits into jigsaw static

blood everywhere like a tragic womb's expulsion

but

still nothing happens, shredded muscle won't respond

until he takes the red

and paints a smile over the cracks.

* * *

This is the Joker seeing his new face for the first time. Inspired by Alex Ross' famous picture of the comic-Joker looking into a mirror. (See the actual picture and the drabble might be clearer.)


	3. Rot

Maybe this is Arkham, maybe it's nowhere.

It's nothing but endless, pitch dark. Time floats by in chewed, bloody chunks overhead.

He's ever naked, and he knows what it means.

Sometimes he finds walls, etched with gangrene psalms of madhouse woe, sometimes not.

Sometimes the dark grows fingers like scalpels that pester at his brain, sometimes fangs

and rustles with the leather of wings.

Coals of fight flare to life. He proves he can still beat them back.

Sometimes he sees the Joker. He's naked as well, but he still has his paint. White face ghostly-bright in the swimming black. They come together.

The darkness seethes around them, but it keeps its distance

for they are what it fears.

* * *

Inspired after reading countless "Bruce-in-Arkham" fics.


	4. Scrap

Missing scene from my old fic "Complete."

* * *

Bruce lies back, almost subconsciously

exploring the evidence

bitemarks, chilled sweat and greasepaint on his body.

Rain hisses at the windows. Always the reminder of

marching charcoals and damp coffin smell. Now, maybe never again.

He's frightened because, their usual violence strangely absent

it was too close to lovemaking.

The Joker is sitting up, his every scar still

wet-bright from Bruce's saliva.

"How long?" Bruce almost whispers.

_How long have you known?_

"Since the start." A shrug. "Wasn't hard."

Bruce snaps upright, electro-shock memories of

Dent, Rachel, all the deaths, the terror

caroming through his mind

and all he can say is, "Then…_why?!"_

The Joker turns and grins, teeth stretching shadows. "I wanted to see what you'd _do_, remember?"


	5. Dream

She says, "You needed Batman more than you needed me."

He says, And what if?

She sighs. "Bruce, I told you, I'd be there as your _friend_—"

Old pain a poison quirk to his mouth. C'mon, Rachel, you were never there.

_Where were you when I was screaming?_

She pulls back, as she always did. How can she explain,

the black, stormy void he had become then, she'd had to break away before it swallowed her up too.

But guilt confused with love because she didn't want to believe she was like that,

and she's just found that even death

is not a cure-all. She's not going to cry, though.

You can't cry for what was always dead.

* * *

Yes, this is Bruce talking to Rachel in a dream.


	6. Fluke

Random phone number on a paper scrap stuck to bleached clown's shoe. Calls it later at his hideout while Harley and the hyenas snore,

hoping for a relative of someone killed today, grief he can twist into a noose. He giggles, waits

while, between universes, connection slips up through a rabbit hole-glitch,

and a scarred clown wakes up, reaches over his current apartment's dead owner to answer.

Voices touch across worlds, bleached clown's a funeral flute-purr, "Hellooooo."

Scarred's thick and graveled, bloodrust on a blade, "Hi."

Pause. Something unsettling here, beyond their experience. Hackles tense on both sides. Worlds around them brace for two jester-lords' apocalyptic clash.

Line fizzles dead. Teething hyena grins guiltily around the cord.

That's that.

* * *

And that, ladies and gentlemen, was the amazing crossover between comic-Joker and Nolan-Joker.


	7. Stroll

Sun is blazing down as the Joker walks his dogs,

long limbs swinging carelessly, Rottweilers military-stiff ahead.

He whistles because

it's what normal people do. He smiles at people, even waves

with the hand not holding the leashes.

No one smiles back.

A little flesh-toned paint over the ravages, rainbowed attire absent

no one gives him a second glance. Just another in the endless sea of

living-dead faces, all the same, worn too dull

against the daily grind

even to notice what's right in their midst.

They don't even realize

how much they need him. If they could see what he sees,

how they'd thank him

for all that he does.

They'd see

he's not crazy,

just

_alive_.


	8. Frustration

Dry rustle of paper rasps at the quiet,

the Joker turns the page. Grits teeth.

Tosses the newspaper, reaches for another.

Same thing. Stale headlines of

celluloid stars with stubbed toes, sports scores and pants-dropped politicians.

Meanwhile, he gets squashed back to page nine.

Safe entertainment to soften the gutshot blows

of tiny-font terrorism and genocide.

He's not surprised.

That's why he's here, after all. His calling. Knock the apathy sand from their ears, make them see truth.

He's nothing

if not creative, he can always do better.

But there are times, all his beautiful fires reflecting off

ignorant turned backs, those tremors as he knocks out foundations

brushed off,

he can't help but wonder

what does it _take?_


	9. Sighting

"Poppy? You getting anything?"

"Nothing. You?"

Gotham Opera House. Tiptoeing through velvets stained bloody with urban legends and murder.

"What about that groaning we heard?"

"The icemaker."

Air temperature steady. Equipment heavy on them as the threat of _Phantom Finders'_ cancellation. Nothing.

Then—

"Hey, hear that?"

"Are there any spirits here who would like to—"

"You _hear_ that?"

"Are you the ghosts of Thomas and Martha Wayne?"

Shriek of a window shattering, heavy shoes pounding the rug. Gunfire.

"OHSHITOHSHITOH_SHIT_—!"

_"Get down!"_

After a long minute, sounds fade away.

"Phew. _Gotham_, huh?"

Rewind the dropped camera. Replaying:

something in the balcony. Sweep of a solid shadow, ears like a bat's

there and gone.

"Think we got somethin' better."

* * *

The story of this one was, some paranormal investigators go to the Gotham Opera House (site of the Wayne murders) hoping to get ghost footage for their show, and get a camera-full of Batman in action instead.


	10. Lines

Lucius Fox, looking over some of Bruce's

hand-drawn designs for the batarmor, remarks,

"Coulda been an artist, Mr. Wayne."

Bruce gazes at the rough lines of pencil,

snared, for a moment, in a time forgotten

of crayon dreams of comic book fame

swallowing him in the sunny afternoons

like Narcissus into the heartless mirror-pool.

He shakes it off, smiles and says, "Yeah, well, I found a better job."

--

At the Joker's hideout, drunken laughter swells to the rafters

in the wake of a biting quip from the clown.

A henchman wipes tearful

mirth from his eye, says between swings, "You coulda been a comedian, boss."

The Joker stops cleaning his knife, smiles. "I, ah, found a better job."

* * *

Was inspired to write this after reading Batman #689, where Alfred is reflecting on the drawing skills Bruce showed in his youth.


	11. Do over

"Hello, Gotham."

Not a hurricane warning, not a forecast of nuclear winter. Worse, because

at least those things

come from a place you can understand.

Somewhere claustrophobic, cold, walls molting with decay,

three people sit

cruelly bound, heads lolling.

The Joker beside them, a hunter showing off his catch. Shoe, broken from beating them, in hand.

"It's been a while," he purrs to the camera, his audience, "but I assure you_hee—"_

A twitch. He shakes it off.

"At mid_hee_night you'll all_heeeEEEEEEE…"_

Oil-smooth speech in rags from

unceasing grimaces, wheezed laughter;

Schiff peeking, baffled, from behind the camera

even the hostages wondering what's going on

before the Joker finally yells

"CUT!"

and pushes away the dog licking his foot.

* * *

I wondered if the Joker ever messed up a take of his video threats.


	12. Leather

_Why here? _The Joker wonders as his face is ground

deeper into the leather of the Tumbler's seat,

his Bat's weight crushing him down, pounding into him with a force

that sends tremors through the car.

Maybe, and he can understand this, the Bat is trying to prove something.

Maybe this is just to make it clear

that the Joker is his, to do with as he wants,

when and where he wants, ownership imprinted in seat creases

between the hickey-bruises and scars.

Maybe, maybe not, but

kisses singe the length of his spine, the Tumbler's bruising controls dug into his side

trapped air spiked heavy with sweat and delirium, he decides

whatever this is, it works for him.


	13. Dare

"Tap the glass."

"What?"

"You go up. You tap. On the glass. Five bucks."

"Oh, nononono…"

But before Virus can stop herself, she's tiptoeing

away from Erin, away from Dane's smile and promised bill,

toward the hulking black tank

just fifty feet away.

Is it her, or is the car –the _Batman's_ car, is this happening?—shaking?

Erin follows, just to be safe.

Window tinted beyond transparency. Look closer. A strange moist film on it, from inside.

Wait, she can _almost_ see—

Erin's grip brutal on her arm, yanking her away. She lets herself be dragged, can barely talk, stunned.

"God, Erin…_Erin_, did you see…?"

Erin's jaw set tight. "NO."

"Erin, was that—"

"_Nothin',_ Vy. We saw _nothin'_."

* * *

This is a sequel to the last one, "Leather." I don't think much more needs to be said. I wanted to make it clearer that the Tumbler wasn't parked out in the open but in some shadowy place where you'd think nobody would have found it, but I failed. Oh well.


	14. Hellfire

_Why?_

Sky fouled red with smoke and flame.

Batman slumps back, winded, tasting blood

can't stand.

Embers swirl like gold-minted leaves.

He shuts his eyes, seeing

the flashburnt dance of faces

who are no more.

Their ashes in his mouth

bitter as defeat, as the grave.

Why was this done?

What was the reason? What did any of it prove?

Was it all just to get

his _attention?_

Backlit by flames, only the Joker's smile is visible. "Batman. My work, my _art_… is for _everyone_.

_But,_

my body, my…_soul_

are only for you."

The Joker's hands trapping him, pinning him down

eyes sharp points of light like glinting fangs,

the ravaged lips smother his

reviving him with death.


	15. Mornings

They try, they really do,  
to go on as if nothing has happened.

But how can they?

They still talk, but  
the familiar life-raft teasings  
sit in their vocal cords like heavy sap.

Bruce doesn't blame him,  
but they both miss the mornings  
when Alfred would bring him hot tea  
and gentle admonishments  
to soothe a strained throat and heart.

What Bruce doesn't know is that  
Alfred still does come up sometimes  
but every time, no matter how quietly he enters  
the Joker always hears, jerks up and crouches  
over Bruce's sleeping body, eyes promising  
the wrath of a thousand hells  
should Alfred attempt to wake him up.

Master Wayne hasn't gotten to an early meeting in three months.


	16. Drive

Batman drives, mouth drawn bowstring-tight  
taking twilight roads the police can't follow.  
The car's interior is embalmed in silence.  
The engine seethes without a sound.  
Fires blaze, sirens strobe and mourners wail in the hindsight of  
the rearview mirror.  
The Joker sits in the seat beside him, cuffed hands stained  
with ash and innocent lives  
a calm smile hinting at his lips  
as he leans his head against Batman's shoulder, almost asleep.  
Batman's hands strangle the wheel, knuckles bleached, but even now  
they won't  
can't  
push him away.  
The empty atmosphere is ripe for  
the bullet wounds of ridicule, laughter and face-graveling truths  
driving that stake ever deeper  
and the Joker says nothing, letting the joke  
speak for itself.


	17. Rinse

The Joker sits in the bathtub, head tipped back, seeing nothing.  
The way the tub's shining walls turn black with his filth  
makes him smile.  
Everything burns, and nothing white can stay.  
From out in the hallway comes  
a scream, a blast of gunfire, sounds of fists against flesh  
then stillness.  
The Joker sighs. You finally get a chance to relax...  
No matter, he can work with this, too.  
He's been needing some new men anyway, and there's no better source than the asylum.  
He closes his eyes, hears the bang of the door being kicked off its hinges  
and opens them again to see Batman  
standing there, holding a towel open.  
Dripping, he gets out  
steps into it.


	18. Bugs

It hits during a meeting.

A crawling, scaly itch that erupts in his groin, shocking Bruce from murky slumber. His thoughts leap to the Joker,  
months of unprotected alley and silk sheet trysts.  
The meeting drags on,  
burn enflaming his imagination  
with visions of STDs, irreparable damage.  
But, later, a self-examination leads to flooding relief:

lice.

Twelve hours and a thorough date with  
hair-eating shampoos later, and he's on his knees  
before the Joker in the shower, zeroing on the source of his tormentors.  
The Joker giggles and thrashes like a trussed-up shark  
everything becomes  
a stinging frenzy of soap and spray, and when it's over  
the Joker  
sodden, red-eyed, smiling  
asks Bruce  
what he was trying to accomplish.


	19. Tricks

As it turns out, pencils disappearing  
into brainmatter and nastier places  
isn't the only "magic trick" the Joker has up his sleeve.  
He can breathe fire, swallow knives  
and pull things out of your ears  
you never wanted to know were in there.

Once, while ransacking a circus  
to the tune of surprisingly few casualties  
doused in spotlight, he inserted the full, vibrating blade of a jackhammer  
greased in someone else's blood  
into his tipped mouth, clear down into his throat

while his thugs held guns on the awestruck audience,  
equally transfixed and fish-dumb themselves.  
They're simple men  
moments like these are all it takes  
to unclench their brittle grasps of reality  
and scatter it into the merciless wind.


	20. Upended

These days, Gordon feels like a stargazer  
earthbound, helpless, only able to watch  
as Batman and the Joker clash like heat lightning through Gotham  
mortal fate in the hands of distant gods.

Things are getting stranger.  
Worlds rearrange themselves at the tilt of a whiskey bottle  
and he's stumbling along on puppet strings  
of pure will and faith.

And then  
tonight  
police spotlight cast into the scene, pinning the warring titans  
Batman leans into the light, staring down the officers  
one armored arm flung between them  
and the Joker at his side, who just smiles with a razormetal wink.  
Protecting whom  
Gordon isn't sure.

A blink and they're gone  
spotlight glaringly vacant.

Not sure what to make of that.


	21. Visit

(This one takes place before they were lovers.)

* * *

Sweep of shadow across security feed  
a phantom visits Arkham.  
He's come to see  
where his money has been going, inspecting the results  
from angles a playboy can't.  
It's the _only_ reason.

"Evening, Bat."

He stops.

It came from the cell behind him.  
"Joker."

He stares ahead, doesn't turn. He doesn't know  
why he answers. "How've you been?"  
"Better, since that nice _Wayne_ guy poured all that cash into that this place.  
Hm, wonder why he did _that?"  
_That's another place  
Batman doesn't care to venture.

Six inches of bulletproof transparency  
all that shields Gotham from destruction.  
The madman's hand rests upon it.

Glove to the Joker's splayed palm  
through the thin chill of the glass  
they nearly touch.


	22. Trespasser

Awareness of a bad idea suffocates under  
a bloom of toxic lust  
as Pamela Isley, murderess  
stalks closer with venom on her lips.

Piled on the floor beneath Batman's feet  
remains of other victims.

Scientific logic tries to beat back  
the hypnotic reek of pheromone miasma  
bewildering his senses, dissolving the will to fight  
but paralysis straightjackets him,  
and his filter has been knocked away.  
Her pearly Lilith flesh. Her sin-red hair.  
_Fight it fight it!  
_Isley smiles, glimmering  
succubus hunger.

She reaches.

And stops.

Slowly her eyes roll  
as if to examine the knifehandle  
suddenly growing from her temple.  
She crumples.  
The mist clears.  
The Joker standing there, re-sheathing his knife, addressing the corpse.  
"That's" he hisses, "_mine."_

* * *

For the record, I have nothing against Poison Ivy.


	23. Date

Something for Valentine's Day.

* * *

The Joker isn't quite sure  
why he agrees.  
Give him black Kevlar against his blades, explosions, sweat-kissed battle  
any day. The mundane disgusts him.  
But there's something to be said  
for a break in routine.  
Just this once.  
Just for the hell of it.

It's amusing, he and his Bat walking bold down the streets  
under the thinnest guise of normalcy  
with no passerby looking twice.  
Bruce reserves an entire movie theatre just for them  
the Joker adds his own gruesome sound effects to the on-screen carnage.  
Then dinner, somehow they end up  
sharing one fork. Skip the sights so the violable stillness won't tempt Joker.  
Like everything they do, there's no way it should work  
but it does.


	24. Cuddle

More fluff for Valentine's Day.

* * *

In each other's arms in the aftermath  
of battle or sex, one and the same.  
Their faces, paint and cowl, are peeled off and tossed to the side.  
These warm lazy minutes  
swallowed up in each other,  
blood and muscle cooled, the eternal vigil relaxed.  
Outside, calamity rushes on in  
its ringmasters' fleeting absence.  
The bed beneath them a sandbar in storm-lashed waters  
the crash of breathing  
mingled low and soft  
free from awareness of  
anything else.

Like spidersilk, it's  
less fragile than it looks.

It doesn't last, as it shouldn't.  
But they let it stretch until  
the point of snapping looms, savoring  
the calm beneath the surface  
the heartbeats trapped between them beating  
a faint tattoo of contradiction.


	25. Pleasure

Some think the Joker is a  
masochist. That's wrong.  
Pain is a flavor that's  
simply too familiar  
to hold any sway.  
He can laugh off  
any amount of broken bones, loss of blood or skin

but _this_…

this, he doesn't know.

Feather touches strumming his callused nerves,  
bliss-shock dizzy and devouring  
and his body's mindless, arching response.  
Absence of gloves and punishment  
making those familiar hands a stranger's.  
Where's his Bat gone, who is this  
here instead?  
But he opens his eyes and sees  
his Bat hasn't gone anywhere, this is just a side of him  
the mask keeps locked away.  
And the Joker takes it because  
something, anything  
all for him, no one else  
_that's_ what he wants.


	26. Divided

The Joker makes his way through ruins that have finally shown the decency  
to stop heaving  
past thick clouds of feasting flies, kicking corpses and debris from his path.  
Buildings lie toppled by tremors, the settling dust-heavy silence  
louder than all the earthquake's fury.  
He's annoyed because he knows it'll be a while  
until he can repaint his face.

Gotham is still crawling with crumbs of life  
but its core, the soulless place where  
beats the pulse of dark wings  
is silent.  
And this is how he knows that Gotham  
is truly dead.

After a while he comes across the wreckage  
of a searchlight  
maybe the old batsignal, maybe not.  
Just the same, he sits atop it  
to wait.

* * *

Inspired by the "Batman: No Man's Land" series.


	27. Whole

Sequel to "Divided."

* * *

Bruce drifts, bent under regret  
through dim streets not his own.  
A half-moon winks mockingly  
in the smog-scarred sky.

Weeks spent in sleepless exile searching  
for helping hands,  
thinking of home, so many tombs under  
so much rubble.  
Hope bleeds out like pearls through bullet holes.  
His pleas have fallen on plugged ears  
the government has turned its back,  
Gotham left to rot.  
He feels it calling him back.  
But is there anything left to save?

Back at the hotel, knife-honed senses pick up a presence.  
He steps out to the balcony to find  
green eyes.  
"_Jo-"  
_Quick stolen kiss  
lips rough with dust and death  
a taste of what awaits.  
"Come home, Bat."  
then Bruce is alone again.


	28. Gotham

**You: a tourist in Gotham. Have fun.**

* * *

**Night-spilt streets curving inward like beached bones  
****bowed but refusing to yield  
****to the depth of their decay.  
****Here, ugliness overwhelms its own definition, horrors take on  
****a kind of splendor.**

**It's in the blood on a hooker's knees  
****kneeling for a john in an alley  
****where the murder of a "sister" hasn't yet washed away. **

**It's in the superstitious glance of criminals  
****who roll their glass eyes into the bat-eared shadows  
****to watch for larger predators.**

**It's in the rasping of futile prayers that filter through  
****the London ripper fog of street vapors,  
****and the laughter of clowns that is the sole reply.**

**It's in the rain that cuts the stalking patter  
****of knife-wielding footsteps  
****coming up behind.**


	29. Static

Pause. Rewind. Play.

The tapes unfold serially  
like shuffling cards.

The Joker, stripped of his colors  
against the harsh backdrop of unmelting asylum white.  
The dimness parts for his basilisk gaze. Unfathomable stains mar the walls behind him.  
It's like looking into the editing room of the subconscious  
seeing the raw gray material  
from which nightmares are born.

Doctors extend hopeful hands, offering to pull him  
out of the void  
only to have their wrists seized and dragged in.  
Their dissecting inquiries shredded by the barbs of his tongue.  
The drill of overhead florescent becomes  
an uneasy whine.  
Punchline catastrophe builds.

At the end of each, screen terminates into static  
the afterimage of the Joker lingers.  
It never fades.

* * *

Inspired by the phenomenal "The Joker Blogs."


	30. Perfume

Bruce, behind his  
second facade of choice  
seems content to have knocked everything off its stable axis  
just as he always does.  
Rachel sips her drink and hides a frown.  
She's trying to understand  
the fork in her road.  
Harvey gave her his heart wrapped in a bow  
while Bruce's, she knows, could never be pried  
from its dark cell of bulletproof armor.  
This should be an easy choice. Why  
does she keep stumbling?

She frees her mind from its tangle, casts it around for something else.

Desert orchid perfume thick as musk.

Natasha smiles at her  
her eyes like warm suns breaking over  
the rim of Rachel's skewed domain,  
and for that too-quick moment  
something feels right again.

* * *

RachelxNatasha. I don't know either.


	31. Countertransference

Doctors. Wearing white to hide the bloodstains. Who do they think they're fooling?

Broken doll limbs strung together by  
greasepaint and delusions  
they think that's all he is.  
They're trying to resurrect a dead man, exorcise the demon wearing his skin.  
Their minds so shrunken they can't grasp it  
but slowly, strange termites begin  
to gnaw into their foundations.

They envy him.

They who huddle in fear from the unseen forces at work while he is riding the bloody tide  
that eventually sweeps everything away.  
They feel themselves gravestone-cold when staring into  
the glorious fires that are burning him alive.  
They recognize themselves as butchers dealing out  
that assisted suicide called  
normal.

Pity those without monsters behind their faces.


	32. Harlequin

There are far worse things you can do than  
simply kill a person  
but it's not often he has that luxury these days.  
The problem is, leaving someone alive  
means they might come back seeking vengeance one day  
and he's got too much going on  
to let himself die now.

But, in the case of  
Dr. Harleen Quinzel  
he'll make an exception.

The reason isn't  
her wanting to pick him apart into ribbons for her trophy shelf.  
He understands  
humans simply aren't happy unless they're breaking things.

It's not the way she smiles  
sadistic ignorance heartblood-bright.

It's the kiss she presses to his forehead  
in the darkness of his cell  
when she thinks he's too drugged not to know.

* * *

Some people have found this one a little unclear. I apologize. He's planning to make an exception in her case in that he has a fate worse than death in store for her. This one came about when I was pondering the Joker's abilities to twist and destroy the lives of those around him, ripping out their souls and leaving their broken minds behind to cope. The thing is, in the comics the Joker can't be killed no matter what he gets put through, and for some reason no cop or vengeful citizen has put a bullet to him by now. But in the Nolanverse, which is a bit more grounded in reality, the Joker is only mortal and has to be a little more careful as he doesn't want to leave Batman and Gotham just yet.


	33. Meditation

Calm. Focus.

White nova of clarity floods him, snarls of turmoil unknotting from his mind. Invoking memories of  
ice-thinned mountain air, trying to remember the lessons  
and not the genocide-hungry teachers who spewed them. Each breath a deep tide  
clearing away oceans of clutter. Engulfing. Cleansing.

Hot breath nipping his ear. "Whatcha doin'?"

He breaks concentration just enough to hiss out of the corner of his mouth,  
using a word the Joker will understand, "Something fun."  
Relax. Breathe. Calm. Floodgates opened to the energy of the cosmos. Freefalling into higher planes.

Pressure of a leaning body against his shoulder. Warmth of familiar skin and sneer-curled lips pricking at his defenses.  
"How can it be _fun_ when it's so _quiet_?"

* * *

Bruce tries to meditate, but the Joker won't leave him alone.


	34. Splinter

Everyone can have  
an off day. For the Joker that day is

January 22.

Unfailingly, whether waking in  
an Arkham straightjacket, a stolen Narrows bed, or the arms of his Bat  
it hits  
makes him sit up and stare into the dark.  
A splinter in the back of his mind,  
something pawing beneath the lid of his subconscious  
casting a stormcloud shadow over the rest of the day.  
He really doesn't know what it is.

Things like that,  
this ghost on his back,  
that ephemeral frequency he sometimes picks up  
thin hum like a slain brain signal, savage and taut  
makes him think  
this world is someone else's fiction  
and he's glimpsing beneath the blindfold.

What makes you stranger…

* * *

Musing on the Joker's habit of breaking the fourth wall, this was born. This is the first time I've really attempted any kind of tribute to Mr. Ledger.

Also, the "hum" that the Joker is hearing is his own theme from _The Dark Knight._


End file.
